Thank you, DCUM: parents and ILs weird with food

[Anonymous]

Hotel.

[Anonymous]

I love relatives who serve paltry amounts of food at their own house (it is not a financial thing) but when they come to yours they happily inhale 3 meals a day plus snacks, happy hour, and dessert.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:DH is a tall guy who runs a lot and usually eats like 4k calories a day (he's very thin, if that matters). When we went to visit my grandparents we'd sneak in a big cooler full of food and bags full of snacks, dried meat, nuts, protein bars. DH would gorge himself before every meal so that he could eat like a bird. It was comical and we had to sneak the trash bag out with the evidence on the last day.

I'll never forget a breakfast they served us: spoiled milk, brown pineapple rings that were served out of a old butter tub, "toast" which was hamburger buns pushed into a toaster and bacon which had just been defrosted. She just kept pulling out the worst food out of her fridge and it was all inedible. DH at least acted like it was the best meal she'd ever cooked.

This is beyond bizarre- to sneak around with a cooler, eat in a closet, then sneak around and garbage bags of food trash. Why not just stock the frig And eat out in the open? That Is what a normal person does. Grandma isn’t going to care, and if she does, she will get over it if you don’t get argumentative about it

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Hotel.

For real. I cannot imagine being a grown adult and afraid to eat in someone’s house. Either buy your own food and stock their house if they have nothing or stay in a hotel. Anything in between and being “afraid” of confrontation is beyond crazy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hotel.

For real. I cannot imagine being a grown adult and afraid to eat in someone’s house. Either buy your own food and stock their house if they have nothing or stay in a hotel. Anything in between and being “afraid” of confrontation is beyond crazy.

+1 My mom didn't "close the kitchen" or try to stop me from bringing in groceries, but she would watch and comment incessantly on any and all eating that occurred, and I didn't want my kids to develop a complex about needing lunch. I told her (kindly) to knock it off, that we are an active family with growing kids, and that if there was a problem with us eating on our usual schedule of meals thrice a day we'd stay in a hotel. That did the trick.

[Anonymous]

My ILs and parents are very weird w/ food too.

ILs will eat breakfast (a bowl of oatmeal or yogurt and granola) and then have nothing else to eat until late afternoon when they'll have some very light (like a salad but not a big salad w/ protein in it just a regular house salad type salad) dinner. That's fine. But when we visit we need to eat more than that so we bring our own food and make our own separate meals and then get all the comments from them about how we "just ate" and "you're eating again?!" and "wow that's a big meal. Guess we'll have lots of leftovers tomorrow!" They are always hovering around us in the kitchen when we're preparing food for ourselves/the kids, going behind us asking what we're making and turning the stove/oven off when we had something cooking, cleaning up a prep area we're still using, washing dishes we are still using, etc. It's so annoying but we just grin and bear it. We always offer to make dinner or lunch for them too and they always turn it down. I used to get offended that they don't like our cooking until realizing they really just don't have much appetite and don't really enjoy eating.

My parents don't eat breakfast or will get up at 8 and just have coffee and then around noon, they'll eat a bowl of cereal. Then they don't eat lunch. Or at 3pm they'll have a yogurt and handful of nuts or an apple. At least they will eat a decent sized dinner at the typical dinner time 6-7. That's all fine for them it just doesn't really work for us. We have young kids so when my parents visit and we're trying to get out of the house in the morning to go to the museum or wherever, we always encourage my parents to eat breakfast before we go. They don't because that's not part of their "routine" to get up and eat and go somewhere before lunch. Then they'll complain about being hungry while on our outing. We'll come home, the we and the kids will eat lunch and my parents will comment about how we're eating such a big lunch and they're just having cereal, as if they had no other choice.

TL;DR: my parents and in laws have weird food hang ups and habits. It doesn't matter to me except I'm not going to try to adapt to their habits/food schedules and we continue doing things our own way when we visit w/ them and just ignore their comments.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I love relatives who serve paltry amounts of food at their own house (it is not a financial thing) but when they come to yours they happily inhale 3 meals a day plus snacks, happy hour, and dessert.

My ILs are visiting you? They have no food in their house. They look at our fridge/pantry as a challenge to eat everything in it. I now only buy bananas and orange when they visit because if I have 3 containers of raspberries, 2 of strawberries, and one of blueberries, meant to last for multiple breakfasts for the kids, they will be gone on day one and I’d spend a small fortune in berries for the week. I also have to bag, staple shut, and label dinner ingredients lest I come home from work and find they roasted the chicken I intended to make for dinner and eaten it for lunch.

So say I make 20 baked chicken drumsticks, a large pot of rice, steamed broccoli, and salad for 4 adults and 2 young children who only eat one each. It will all be gone in one sitting because my FIL will amble back into the kitchen and see that there are maybe 2 or 3 drumsticks left and call “hey Jane, we need to finish these up, there are 3 left, I’ll eat 2 and you have 1.” Then, no more than 20 minutes after the meal they will eat heaping bowls of ice cream and 30 minutes after that MIL is in the kitchen looking for a glass of milk and a piece of fruit. They must save all their calories for visiting us because they are not heavy people.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I love relatives who serve paltry amounts of food at their own house (it is not a financial thing) but when they come to yours they happily inhale 3 meals a day plus snacks, happy hour, and dessert.

My ILs are visiting you? They have no food in their house. They look at our fridge/pantry as a challenge to eat everything in it. I now only buy bananas and orange when they visit because if I have 3 containers of raspberries, 2 of strawberries, and one of blueberries, meant to last for multiple breakfasts for the kids, they will be gone on day one and I’d spend a small fortune in berries for the week. I also have to bag, staple shut, and label dinner ingredients lest I come home from work and find they roasted the chicken I intended to make for dinner and eaten it for lunch.

So say I make 20 baked chicken drumsticks, a large pot of rice, steamed broccoli, and salad for 4 adults and 2 young children who only eat one each. It will all be gone in one sitting because my FIL will amble back into the kitchen and see that there are maybe 2 or 3 drumsticks left and call “hey Jane, we need to finish these up, there are 3 left, I’ll eat 2 and you have 1.” Then, no more than 20 minutes after the meal they will eat heaping bowls of ice cream and 30 minutes after that MIL is in the kitchen looking for a glass of milk and a piece of fruit. They must save all their calories for visiting us because they are not heavy people.

I think some people see it as a game, a challenge, to recoup the cost of their plane tickets by eating their hosts out of house and home. This is a different situation than the people who don’t eat much because they don’t have the appetite for it as they age, and they forget what it’s like be hungry for 3 meals a day.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I love relatives who serve paltry amounts of food at their own house (it is not a financial thing) but when they come to yours they happily inhale 3 meals a day plus snacks, happy hour, and dessert.

My ILs are visiting you? They have no food in their house. They look at our fridge/pantry as a challenge to eat everything in it. I now only buy bananas and orange when they visit because if I have 3 containers of raspberries, 2 of strawberries, and one of blueberries, meant to last for multiple breakfasts for the kids, they will be gone on day one and I’d spend a small fortune in berries for the week. I also have to bag, staple shut, and label dinner ingredients lest I come home from work and find they roasted the chicken I intended to make for dinner and eaten it for lunch.

So say I make 20 baked chicken drumsticks, a large pot of rice, steamed broccoli, and salad for 4 adults and 2 young children who only eat one each. It will all be gone in one sitting because my FIL will amble back into the kitchen and see that there are maybe 2 or 3 drumsticks left and call “hey Jane, we need to finish these up, there are 3 left, I’ll eat 2 and you have 1.” Then, no more than 20 minutes after the meal they will eat heaping bowls of ice cream and 30 minutes after that MIL is in the kitchen looking for a glass of milk and a piece of fruit. They must save all their calories for visiting us because they are not heavy people.

They starve themselves until they come see you. They are making up for lost meals.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I love relatives who serve paltry amounts of food at their own house (it is not a financial thing) but when they come to yours they happily inhale 3 meals a day plus snacks, happy hour, and dessert.

My ILs are visiting you? They have no food in their house. They look at our fridge/pantry as a challenge to eat everything in it. I now only buy bananas and orange when they visit because if I have 3 containers of raspberries, 2 of strawberries, and one of blueberries, meant to last for multiple breakfasts for the kids, they will be gone on day one and I’d spend a small fortune in berries for the week. I also have to bag, staple shut, and label dinner ingredients lest I come home from work and find they roasted the chicken I intended to make for dinner and eaten it for lunch.

So say I make 20 baked chicken drumsticks, a large pot of rice, steamed broccoli, and salad for 4 adults and 2 young children who only eat one each. It will all be gone in one sitting because my FIL will amble back into the kitchen and see that there are maybe 2 or 3 drumsticks left and call “hey Jane, we need to finish these up, there are 3 left, I’ll eat 2 and you have 1.” Then, no more than 20 minutes after the meal they will eat heaping bowls of ice cream and 30 minutes after that MIL is in the kitchen looking for a glass of milk and a piece of fruit. They must save all their calories for visiting us because they are not heavy people.

They starve themselves until they come see you. They are making up for lost meals.

Quite possibly since when we visit them they believe that one 1lb box of spaghetti is a sufficient dinner for 6 adults and 4 children.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I love relatives who serve paltry amounts of food at their own house (it is not a financial thing) but when they come to yours they happily inhale 3 meals a day plus snacks, happy hour, and dessert.

My ILs are visiting you? They have no food in their house. They look at our fridge/pantry as a challenge to eat everything in it. I now only buy bananas and orange when they visit because if I have 3 containers of raspberries, 2 of strawberries, and one of blueberries, meant to last for multiple breakfasts for the kids, they will be gone on day one and I’d spend a small fortune in berries for the week. I also have to bag, staple shut, and label dinner ingredients lest I come home from work and find they roasted the chicken I intended to make for dinner and eaten it for lunch.

So say I make 20 baked chicken drumsticks, a large pot of rice, steamed broccoli, and salad for 4 adults and 2 young children who only eat one each. It will all be gone in one sitting because my FIL will amble back into the kitchen and see that there are maybe 2 or 3 drumsticks left and call “hey Jane, we need to finish these up, there are 3 left, I’ll eat 2 and you have 1.” Then, no more than 20 minutes after the meal they will eat heaping bowls of ice cream and 30 minutes after that MIL is in the kitchen looking for a glass of milk and a piece of fruit. They must save all their calories for visiting us because they are not heavy people.

They starve themselves until they come see you. They are making up for lost meals.

Quite possibly since when we visit them they believe that one 1lb box of spaghetti is a sufficient dinner for 6 adults and 4 children.

I am infuriated on your behalf.

[Anonymous]

I love this thread. My Dad is super weird with food and enjoys controlling the refrigerator and monitoring who is eating what and how much of what. OMG! "Why don't you have a kale smoothie instead of juice", " No sugar at our place. You should feed your children seaweed and edamame for snacks. Apples with peanut butter is just apples with lard over top of it.", All food should be eaten by 5p. Eating after 5 makes you fat. It never ends! We now stay at a hotel and do what we want. The hell with that. Thanks DCUM for helping me take a stand to this Kitchen Bully.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We have the opposite problem. My in laws bring a bunch of random things when they visit and leave them with us. Ham hocks, super fruity wine and beer, a load of bacon, "this pineapple on sale," mango salsa, etc. Nothing for a full meal or dish. They do also bring the full snack shelf from Trader Joes, so that's a plus.

I adore them and my husband and I think this is hilarious.

I'm still not sure what to do with the collection of cherry wine and pumpkin beer we have accumulated, however.

My grandparents used to do that. Giant bags of nuts, but always the ones no one wants like Brazil nuts. Half bag of apples. 3 slices of cheese. And one memorable time, a Costco-sized can of gefilte fish. And it was nowhere near Passover. I asked why they drove cross-country with that - I could sort of see eating the other stuff over a couple days but they didn't even have a can opener. They just shrugged.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My ILs are so messed up about food that my MIL and my FIL are 70 and 80 and each do their own grocery shopping and each has their own set "time" in the kitchen which means that FIL only eats breakfast and dinner and MIL only eats lunch. It's very, very weird.

Okay I think this wins. Wow.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Who are these people that limit food? I don’t think I am sheltered, but I don’t know anyone like this.

I think its an age thing. My parents weren't like that growing up but I hear from others who visit/stay with them that they pull that kind of stuff. I had to rescue one cousin who was starving.

Yes, it has to be an age thing!

My siblings and I had free-reign in the kitchen, and my mom always bought all of the good snacks. We never had any food restrictions growing up or any weird eating rules.

They got old and pulled this "kitchen's closed" crap. When my mom made a 3 mushroom risotto and spinach salad that my kid didn't eat, I went to make a pb&j and my mom told me no, the kitchen was closed. He needed to learn to eat what was given to him or go hungry. A few times of doing that would snap that picky behavior.

Um, excuse me? This from a woman who made TWO dinners most nights because my youngest brother was SO picky. Like, this kid would only eat chicken nuggets, butter bread, Kraft mac & cheese, hot dogs, or Miracle Whip sandwiches. Yes, the last part is right...he hated all lunchmeats and cheeses until he was like 12. So his sandwich in his lunch was just white bread with Miracle Whip (not mayo, good lord no). When I reminded her of that fact and how many times my other siblings and I were forced to eat the normal dinner while he got fun dinner because we weren't picky eaters, she literally said to me "oh, stop being dramatic! he wasn't that bad!"

She got old AND senile, clearly. Even the ex-picky eater called her out a few Thanksgivings ago when my nephew was hungry about 2 hours after we had dinner. My mom told him too bad, kitchen was closed and my brother told her she'd gotten mean in her old age, ha.

I think they truly forget what it was like when they had younger kids. My mom will make comments all the time like "omg, that child is too young to be outside by themselves!" And I'm like "uh, mom, you let us roam the neighborhood all day each day while you worked during the summers! And there were no cell phones so you had no idea where we were or what we were doing. And trust me, we did some shit."